Lean Mean Thirteen

"I know what happened to him. I just don't know where he is now."

"Why do you care?" I asked Joyce.

"I love him."

I burst out laughing, and Joyce cracked a smile.

"Okay, even I couldn't keep a straight face on that one," Joyce said.

"Do you think he's dead?"

"Hard to say one way or another until a body turns up. What I can tell you is this-stay out of my way. I've got an investment here, and I intend to collect. And I'll run over anyone who tries to stop me."

"Hard to believe Dickie had that much money. From what I could see, he wasn't that smart."

"You have no idea what's involved here. And I'm warning you again. Stay out of it."

Joyce was really starting to a

"Looks like you're doing some redecorating," I said to Joyce. "Is that animal fur on your chandelier?"

We locked eyes, and I knew the thought was fluttering in her head… did Stephanie Plum mastermind the beaver bombing? And then the moment passed, and we both stepped back from it.

I walked to the Caye

Coglin answered the door with a sawed-off shotgun in his. "Now what?" he asked.

"Same ol’, same ol’," I told him.

"I'm not going with you. I can't. I gotta stay here. I'll go as soon as I can."

I looked down the barrel of the sawed-off. "All right, then," I said. "Good conversation. Call me when you're ready to, uh, you know."

I got into the Caye

"If you're looking for Lula, she isn't here," Co

"I swear, I didn't have anything to do with that fire. I wasn't anywhere near that house."

"Sure," Co

"Yes and no. I came here to use the by-phone number program."

"Is this for Hansen?"

"No. I'm trying to make sense of the Dickie mess. Joyce is tied up in it. I don't exactly know how or why, but I got some numbers off her phone, and I want to run them down. One of them is for the Smith Barney automated Reserved Client Service Center."

"That's heavy," Co

I pulled a chair up to Co

"Doing some breaking and entering?"

"Only entering. Her door was open. I'd like to get into that account, but it asks for an account number."

Co

"The top number is the phone number. The second number I don't recognize, and the last number is Dickie's social security number."

"And they were written in this order on her pad?"

"Yep."

Co

"I'm in," Co

"I don't know."

"It can't be Joyce's," Co

No kidding. When Joyce said Dickie was worth money, I wasn't thinking this kind of money. "Maybe he stole it from the guys who snatched him, and they got cranky."

Co

"After we get rid of the dupes, there are sixteen numbers," Co

I watched the information come in. Five calls from the law firm in the last two days. And Joyce got an incoming call at one in the morning from "Peter Smullen right after Dickie disappeared.

"Isn't Smullen a partner?" Co

"Yes. That's kind of weird that he called Joyce at one in the morning."

"Maybe there's something going on with them."

Yuk. What would that mean for my meeting? I thought Smullen wanted to talk to me about kidnapping and murder. It would be horrible if it turned out he wanted to talk about sex. Maybe he didn't notice the bug. Maybe he noticed the cleavage.

The rest of the list looked benign. I took the printed copy from Co

"Gotta go," I said to Co

Co

I left the bonds office, settled myself in the Caye

"Yo," Ranger said.

"I took your advice and went to talk to Joyce, and 1 learned there's a Smith Barney account that has Dickie's social security number as an access code. It has a zero balance and the last withdrawal was forty million dollars."

"Joyce shared that with you?"

"More or less. When you went through Dickie's house, did you search his home office?"

"No. I wanted to see the crime scene, and I didn't have time for much else. I slid in between police investigations."

"Maybe it would be a good idea to poke around in Dickie's office and see what turns up. I'd like to prowl through his law office too, but that feels more complicated."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm at the bonds office."

"Pick me up at RangeMan."

Range Man is located on a quiet side street in downtown Trenton. It's a relatively small, unobtrusive seven-story building sandwiched between other commercial properties. There's a number on the front door and a small brass plaque, but no sign a

Ranger was waiting outside for me. I pulled to the curb and placed his hat on the console. He got in and put the hat on.

"Do you feel better now?" I asked him.

"A friend gave this hat to me just before he died. It's a reminder to stay alert."

I glanced over at him. "I thought you wore it because it looked hot."

That got a smile from him. "Do you think I look hot in this hat?"

I thought he looked hot in everything. "It's a pretty good hat," I told him.

When I reached Dickie's house, I did a slow drive-by. The crime scene tape had been taken down, and the house no longer felt ominous. No cars in the driveway. No lights shining from windows.

"Park in front of the house," Ranger said. "We're going in like we belong here."

We walked to the door, and Ranger tried the handle. Locked. He took a small tool from his jacket pocket, and in twenty seconds the door was open. I suspected the tool was for show, and if I hadn't been watching he'd say abracadabra and the door would unlock.